I lay on your chest and listen to your heart pitter-patter like the falling of rain
That sound resonates within my ears and pulls me
Pulls me into a chaotic silence because all I hear is you
Like darkness you cover me
Like light you free me
I lay on your chest and feel your heart stuttering like a boy in love
But you are in love
And what's more, you're in love with a girl who's in love with you

My mother once told me that spontaneous love dies with age
that boys who set up those tea light candles
let the romance dim along with the wick
And the girls who marvel over the fact that that shirt smells like him
let his love fade like the now unnoticeable scent
After awhile realistic love is what pumps through the heart
It's more Hi, how was your day from across the kitchen
and less Hey, what are you thinking about whispered sweetly into the ear
My mother once told me that realistic love is better
but really every girl, no matter the age, wants to have musicless dances in the living room
Or unexpected embraces, with his arms wrapping around her waist just because
No girl wants realistic love even if that's what she accepts

Laying outside on a spring loaded blanket
Underneath a dark sky that laid like a cover
With embedded jewels of white
Laying next to someone who shares the same thoughts
Like shocking each other with the same electrical current
Jolting alive memories, preferences, feelings
Laying under a moon set alight by the sun
It radiating beams of cold light
Yet we're both so warm

     Even though the time is gone
     The trampoline is empty
     The moon still remains the same
     Never changing, eternity

Hands like soft sandpaper graze my skin
Leaving trails of heat like sunlight
You placed your collage of kisses
                              
                                     Here
                                                            ­    
                                                                ­           And here
                        
       Also here

Like a treasure map all over my body
That eventually leads to my raw lips
That smile because those pale purple marks
Are play buttons that let me relive that moment

Show me the array of lights in black
Show me rolling green ribbons
Show me lighted, artificial trees that touch the sky
Show me the Guatemalan northern lights at dusk  
Show me Italian pathways

Show me sweet nothings
Show me secrets with just the touch of your lips
Show me how to feel your heart beating
Show me how to breathe in your love

Just show me.

I'm just soaking
in it
Just counting the
minutes
Blood stained water
             in
                 the
                      tub
It's hardly the time now
is it
When you're breaking a
little bit
Shoving purple fists
                into
                       walls
I just can't help
it now
You'll have to show
me how
Not to cut myself into
          internal
                        scars
I'm so sorry
that I
Can't keep my ****
face dry
But the water is above
               my
                   head
You could do so much
better
Instead you chose to keep getting
wetter
This tub has been keeping
                 you
                        in
I can't seem get out of
my skin
And I kept thinking where
have you been
It has started to fill up
              my
                    lungs
But you have decided to
stay afloat
While I begin to sink beneath
the boat
At least I can see you
          breathing
                           still

When I was young grass was a calm sea
The wind was a melody sung from breathless trees
The trees were like ballerinas, bowing and swaying

When I was young I'd travel by foot
Hidden dirt paths were roads to hidden places
Leaves were like a canopy of small wings

When I was young I climb wonky stairs
The inside of a rustic pine tree was a home
The branches were like seats and tables

When I was young the gravel driveway was a river
Tire swing was the only way across the flux brook
Rope was like a tether to magic, effervescent and luminous

When I was young everything was not what it seemed

I have been picking up more poetry lately
tightly bound in little books
ink blots on long gone trees

I hope that by reading more poetry
more lines and rhymes and colorful analogies
I could become a writer with words worth reading

I have read those books with prose
disguised as poetry, lacking meaning
and depth with such phrases like
You Are Air and I Breathe You In

I cannot stand the uselessness of prose
without thought
but I also cannot stand poetry
without impact

But I will keep collecting poetry
someone's thoughts on delicate pages
in case I happen upon someone else's words
worth reading

I stand on the edge
of the obsidian water
that has pooled together
Touching the tips
of my bare toes
of my bare bones

I am curious
to see what lies
on the other side
of the water
and my reflection
beckons me
but it is different than I

I am strong
I am the swell of the ocean
I am natural
I am a petal refusing to bow to the rain
I am exposed
I am content in my nakedness

But my reflection is inviting
as she waves to me
to come over to the other side

I am falling head first
into the pool
and I feel every hair
being ripped and laid
perfectly in place
and I feel my face
become malleable wax

And as I emerge
from the pool
on the other side
I am gasping
My skin is red and smooth
My hair is shiny and long
My face is smiling and demure

But my ocean is a puddle to be stepped in
But my petals are to be plucked at any given moment
But my nakedness is to be shamed and clothed

And as I look around
a myriad of pools
surround me
with people
who are just as horrified
as I am

because we are not who we are.

Let's make like smoke and float away
Ride underneath the marbled sky
I want to see the twinkling lights of the city
Like crushed gold and silver they'll glow
Let's go to a sandy beach that's like powered sugar
And dance in the water while the waves brush our feet
Let's make like birds and follow the stars
I want to hide away in a foreign bed
Tucked away underneath cotton sheets with you
In a city that locked with love
Let's just go and be done with the present

Every tick is a countdown
for as long as we live
We are all waiting for time to pass
so we can get to that one moment
and that one moment after that
It's all time is and ever will be
a countdown

I sit, I wait, I watch
I sit here wondering when you'll pull into my driveway that's a thousand miles away
See you pay your fair to the man that ended up bringing you to me
I wait for you to walk up to me and crush your red lips to my aching ones
Feeling your hair between my fingers and the grasp of your rough hands
I watch out my window waiting for you to return home to me while I sit on my bed
Just longing for the moment when I first see you again

I catch myself
thinking of our plans
that don't exist
now

and like trees
I'm shaken
in the wind
of what we once had

and I fall
into daydreams
and you're there
but I remind myself
that
you're not
and
we're done
like evaporated water

and it's strange
to think that the future of
you and I
are
no
longer
you and I

but it has to rain sometime

Dear Moon

I haven't seen your face
in
                                            god knows how long
a while

How have you been
up there
                                                                ­ oceanic endless well of stars
in the sky

I
                                         want to die
could be better, you know?

I've just been feeling
                                                  like lint, unwanted and worthless
down lately

Tell me, Moon
                                   tell me it's all okay
what it's like to be so free

But I know your vow of silence
                                                  wood-sp­lintering quiet
ends in eternity

Here I go again
Looking in the mirror makes my own  heart shutter
It's like being porcelain but without the doll
Without the war paint, without the lip stain
I just look sick, just bones after all.
I glide on the tar black lines
With a flick of the wrist I become awake
I become focused, I become defined
But this is something I have to make.
Even then I look away
Not satisfied with my lacking appearance
Lacking brightness, lacking confidence.
Clearly having no brilliance.
I sigh
I leave
I tried.

Eyes, my eyes
Wavering in the murky water
Move and my doppelganger follows
I stare and I stare back
Although, I know what I can't feel out loud
I stare thrashing in the cold water
Rage filling me and causing unseen waves
The water is still, unmoving
I keep watching
I become stone, dread filling my watery eyes
I watch as my hands cover my face
I blink
I watch and I watch back
Nothing
I smile and I smile back
On the edge of the shore I know
that I am collected
I am peaceful
The water knows who I am and understands
I am unwavering.

I know the angel of obscurity is long in the future
But I'm already there
I'm already there
You **** me everyday
and everyday I can't wait to die
Your gentle moving fingers skim my sun withered skin
like the pages of an archaic atlas of stars
Tracing me like I lead to the brightest quasar
Folding me up and leaving me on the bed
While I wait for the time you need to search
for your way home again
And I'm already there
I'm already there
Swaying and drooping under your presence
Like a flower drinking in the cascading rain
I dance in the downpour of you
Concrete is this
A thousand myriads of infinities
could not define you
and me
us.

The trees were alive but dead
colorful but dull
Flourishing but rotting
during the fall.

Why are you so
familiar to me

You can't know the waves
until you have experienced their roar
that comes out of the bubbled seafoam
or their intensity
that uprushes your legs
and lures you towards the setting horizon

You can't know music
until you have been pulled in
by the thrum of a guitar that echoes
into your heart
or the emotion that overflows through
your fingertips and your eyes
when the chord has struck

You can't know the sun
until you have encountered
its sweltering heat in midsummer
that fills your lungs to the brim
and draws out every piece of energy
through your skin
or the softness of the glow
that is filtered lighted through
the red and orange leaves
on a brisk autumn day

So why are you
so familiar to me

I hope you're alone now
and feel the weight of loss beneath your eyes
Why did you have to turn into an executioner
and put our lives on the tip of the knife
Like a spyglass I see into you
and your tar pit glazed gold
You weren't what you should have been

When you painted galaxies on him
you didn't realize the gravity
When you nearly let me convulse from the heat inside
you didn't realize the pressure
I hope you're alone now
to feel the absence of what you could have had

It creeps up on the land like a cloudless sunrise
Spreading its tendrils of ice ridden air
Gracing the leaves like a wisp, finer than smoke
The leaves turn to red, brown, and gold
As if kissed by the sun itself
They fall from their life
Settling upon the ground, waiting
For someone to walk by but yet
Turn around, giving a second glance
To pounce on the foliage
To relish in the satisfying crunch
Autumn is here, autumn has come
Named rightly after the Fallen, the flung

I remember
when
I was little
I
was oblivious to the
monster
that lived in his
shoes
I didn't notice
or
care to remember what you
did
But every emotion went
black
when you merely wiped it all away with a flick of your
hand
like you had back
then
And suddenly everything was thrown into
hysteria
like how that F5 should have hit you, but didn't
And
now you are too far gone to ever realize what you've
done

I wish someone had told me
while I sat in frilled white socks
and a pink dress on Easter
that love isn't just
for one and only one

I wish someone had told me
that while I would fall for a few
or many
that guilt was useless
because time is thin
and people are sudden
and you can't help what you see

While I watched judges, pastors, shamans
tie the legality of love together in bows or Gordian knots
no one ever told me about the power of eyes
or how to feel about fluttering caused by another
while I'm supposed to remain landlocked with just one someone

Now I'm sick
because of all the feelings screaming through my fingers, curling them, and I have nowhere to place them, and yelling falls in the quiet because I'm guilty
guilty
guilty
of thinking about others
when, apparently, I'm only supposed to think of you

I wish someone had told me
that love is not an is or isn't
It's a maybe, how are you, do you like ramen, music, don't leave, goodbye
And it most certainly hurts
when you aren't sure what to do about the others
who's eyes are pools and who lure you to the edge and pull you in and then you lose them altogether

Why did no one tell me

Slam me into that unforgiving wall
Take handfuls of my hair and pull
while I cry out into the home of dark
Drag your rough fingers up my hips
to my naked ribs while I fight you
Let your lips find their way to my broken ones
Sore from having done this before
Bruised because I asked you to
Pick me up and let me wrap my shaking legs
around your bare waist
Push me onto cloud nine
So beyond lust or love
we collide like light against dark
Constant
Oh, how good it feels to have your presence
touch mine
We're gone but together

I find myself holding my breath for you
when I'm down in the subway
dark and dingy
I'm waiting to see you
in between people
or through the grime and grease windows
on a train going the other way

I swallow up the air
when I'm out in the city
turning around cold corners
and blinking to change the scene
of the faces in front of me
as the thought of bumping into you
turns my palms wet and sweaty

I'm holding my breath for you
but my vision is blurry and
there's a strain going down my neck.
I hope you're holding your breath for me too

"I went to the hospital"
        I remember
"I wanted to stop breathing so you'd come back"
        Don't say that
"I whispered your name when I was asleep"
        You did?
"That's what I was told when I woke up"
       You always have talked in your sleep
"I wanted you to come back"
        *I never wanted to leave

Humidity in theory
harbors images
of nights lit up
by bioluminescent flying jewels
that you catch in between your fingers
like a cage too large
and they fly away
into the sky.
The evenings are thick
with sweltering droplets
that hang beneath
the orange street lights
that cast a muted glow
onto your salty lips
and hazy eyes.
The day's steam.
And as the water fills your lungs
And as your clammy hands run through sweaty hair,
summer is alive.

Humidity in practice
invents beads running down your back
that pool in your shirt
and matted hair that sticks
to the nape of your tender neck
while you claw at your throat,
suffocated breathing
in between the condensation.
The days are layered with
mirages on the bubbling asphalt
like a sea that only burns you
and the yellow lines are
the only safe haven
when crossing the street
with just your soles.
The summer's plastic bag.
And as the sun blisters your skin
And as your hands only long for arctic rain from a calcium faucet,
summer is alive.

Love feels like

Sitting in the passenger's seat
while your favorite song floats out of the speakers
and They're driving with one hand on the wheel and the other
clamped delicately on your leg
and the night has set in
and the lights are fully in bloom
and the heat of the day mingles with your breath
because the windows are down
and you turn the radio up

Oh, how they love the silence
They thrive in the dark
Those voices without bodies.
Poisonous, sharp
Spreading through rusted canals
Into that chamber, that artificial mind
They pull, they squeeze, suffocate
Wither and die.
They stick like tar, tastes sickly sweet
Those voices
They turn into words
Infectious

I wait for
the golden hour to strike
and flood my room
with gilded lethargic light
but it does not come

I wait for
the stark bright white
of the many-faced moon
to fill
the onyx heavy night
but it does not come

I wait for
the sky to be set alight
by the glittered stars
falling and stationary alike
but it does not come

It's been so long

I wait

Let me kiss lips that are like ember
Let them smother me like smoke
Let them fill me like air

Let me wrap my arms around you like a ribbon
Let them hold you like clouds
Let them bind you like string

Let me love you like infinite stars
Let it intertwine us like lace
Let it shower us like pouring rain

"Let's go somewhere."
Where should we go?
"Anywhere. Europe, perhaps?"
That sounds wonderful.
"Though, you don't belong in Europe."
I don't?
"No, you belong among the stars."
The stars?
"Yes, so you can float among the pure light of galaxies. So you can be among the string of the universe's jewels that shine so bright."
I do not belong out there.
"You're too good and too pure for anything this world has to offer. You belong where evil can't touch you. Where you can have serenity. Where you can walk in starlight. Forever."

Twinkling lights
Signs painted with gold
Screams fleeing from carnival rides
Secrets to behold

Wandering around, see the sideshow freaks
Stay away from Envy, Pride, and Greed
Children run by carrying goods and candy
Run to their mothers
Saying they're fine, they're dandy

Moving to the large striped tent
Inside to the music I went
Splendor danced which made magical eyes
Stay away from the edges
that's where torment lies

The lights are dimming, it's time to go
Vile perceptions are coming, it's the end of the show
I'll be back soon, I know I will
*Remember, stay in the light of the carousel

The lilt of silence
exists within a room
a ceiling high and warm
the sound is rounded
as it lays longingly on the window sill
where the dust settles and the day joins in
it is dull and worn like soft leather
And when crammed into a closet
arms length and abrupt
it falls short of being anything more than
a breath

But when silence is allowed to spread
over gentle bodies
and soak deep into the wood
life feels timeless and free

in the lilt of silence

People aren't beautiful
We're ugly
With hideous intentions
Like insidious black monsters hiding our skin
Some monsters want to take that little girl
Others want to see ripples of carnage laid out in front of them
Some simply want to steal away things that don't belong to them
There are a few that are free from that murky black hole
They are like prey sensing predators
But always aware of the disease that some of us are.

You don't know
just how you've
destroyed it

Just how you've
created spaces
replaced it all with air

Just how you've
let the dust settle
in between the floorboards
and our fingers

Just how you've taken
all the thunder
and left
nothing
but the rain

It's coming.
"It'll be okay."
Everything is going to disappear.
                    I look upwards and mentally start the countdown
                                                       10...9...8...
"Don't look at it. Look at me. You look at me."
Everything is going to end.
                                            I feel it getting closer
                                                        7...6...5...
"We'll be alright, I promise."
I'm still scared.*
                                                  It's almost near
                                                        4...3...2...
"Don't be."
                     We are crying as I leave him to get on my flight
                                                             1
               Like a nuclear bomb, the 8 am left devastation in its wake
                                           and we are torn apart.

I might as well
have no
concept
of object permanence
Because every time
I turn around
things keep shifting
One moment things
are falling to the ground
and then
every thing has settled
A tree
loses it's leaves
but next spring
they will have appeared again
A house catches alight
flames licking the wood
But turning a back to it
for a year
the house is no more
on fire
An ever altering
world
has no concept of
object permanence
because permanent is
is a figment of our imagination

Trailer park, white washed homes
Spouting about god and his power
when your god has no power to me
So take it to the Pit
where it might do some good
or swallow you in you entirety, burning

School yard, miniature "angels"
Regurgitating your ignorant tar
from parents of the rural
You love to mimic the words of god, don't you?
But your god apparently has no power to change you
Irony

Public spaces, wireless platforms
You believe he will make a cleansing
of race, of gender, of sexuality, of place
Such a sickening person, aren't you?
Impressive hate, from god

Cradling life in my heart
isn't my breath
isn't my need
I have clutched in my piano fingers
prism colors, shaped, circle square circle circle
Taking one like being doused in rain
I'm swaying
I  s  m  e  a  r  the rest into
my hungry release
I whisper my loss of feeling
Finally fading

I run here
when things are bad

Here I am

because You are sticking your fingers
down my throat and plucking out vertebrae
until I can't move
caught in your shadow
until I begin choking

and You hang off me like a wet shirt
two sizes too big and unfeeling
I try to throw You off
but You're clawing at my legs and
pulling me down to the dirt
from the soil that you crawled up from

With You
it's like the city took a breath and held it
and I'm holding mine too
because any sudden move
and I'm thrown to the ground
and my neck snapped back by my hair

You are the monster in my closet
the beast in the hollowed parts of my chest
the voice in my head that plants seeds of doubt
and I'm done with You

But You keep coming back

The gray is fading into black
Clouds smudging into night
Like tar snuffing out the light

I walk in balmy weather
as I see my breath turn to wisps

The snow has begun

I feel the heft of a flake
brush, then land definitely on my skin
As I wipe it away
pastel black stains my frame

And I walk along the grid of roads
My path made, there is none
Just the cinder
The snow of bodies
Cremate

The smell of chaos lingers
here
petrified in the outlines
of ghosts on the walls
Silhouette

The air is sludge
draped in wool
stuffing my body
in between
the drifting specks
Burnt

I'm so aware it's silent
like the brief moment after eradication
A pulsing sound that
blacks out
Gasping

Shuttering eyes, I look up
Noticing the giants of the city
Steel bone, firebrick skin, glass eyes
Empty as these transparent mirrors reflect my
frozen, sweaty hands
touch the soot suffocating the street
Wondering whose footsteps are these?